Not the first time Uncle Vik has caught GM Seirawan by surprise in a chess tournament! Image courtesy Alchetron
Facing Unusual Openings ft. Vik and Vik
Unusual openings are a fact of life in chess -- how do you face them?
Unusual opening (n): a series of opening moves which typically have their own distinct branch of theory and are played with significantly lower frequency than traditional opening moves.
Facing unusual openings in chess can be a real trial for chess players of any skill level. Nobody in the chess world is immune to being struck down by the Grob, the Ponziani, or even the vaunted 2.Ke2 -- we all have stories to tell of painful experiences against a wily opponent that caught us off guard.
As a junior player I had a lot of anxiety about facing unusual openings, and tended to score abysmally against them. It was frustrating to study the Ruy Lopez, start to feel confident, and essay it over the board only to be met with 2...d5, the Elephant Gambit. It took me years of resentment, defeat, and dishonesty with myself before I finally had the wherewithal to do what I should have done from the beginning: learn what to do.
Facing unusual openings: before the game
There are some practical ways to prepare ourselves for unusual openings before the game even starts, most importantly learning some theory in them. You may not enjoy the Schliemann enough to want to study it, but much like eating our vegetables, we can't ignore unpleasant parts of chess that we don't want to study. We may even find we like to eat our vegetables.
First and foremost, visualize the opening you dislike playing against the most. You know the one. That can be a good place to start with your study -- after all, we should enjoy chess, not feel like we're suffering through it.
One useful tool you can use to identify which openings you should prioritize over others is OpeningTree.com, a free site that can compile all of your games from the most popular chess servers (lichess included) into an opening tree that labels your results. Probe around to identify which openings you have suffered against the most historically, and start by studying those.
There are also some useful books that can help alleviate a lot of the pain of these lines. I found Richard Palliser's "Beating Unusual Chess Openings" to be a good one, but there are many more out there, some of them depending on your opening repertoire. If you play 1...e5 as black against 1.e4, find a book on the open games. If you play 1...c5 as black against 1.e4, find a book on the anti-Sicilians -- there are many to choose from.
Facing unusual openings: the psychology
There is a unique psychology to facing unusual openings in longer games of chess. The earlier our opponent's deviation from generally accepted theory, the tougher an opening can be to face. Try to avoid these mistakes when facing an unusual opening over the board:
Mistake: "this opening is just garbage"
This is a first class way to lose the game, and a lesson that probably took me over a decade to properly learn. Sometimes the opening you're playing against is pure garbage, but that assessment of it is irrelevant until after the game. During the game, your job is to find the best moves, not editorialize your opponent's moves. We must always give our opponent's moves respect. Overconfidence causes us to miss moves that we would have been otherwise vigilant enough to see had we not been scoffing at our opponent.
Mistake: "I'll just avoid any trouble and play it safe"
Another first class way to lose the game. When confronted with strange moves, it's critical to understand why our opponent did that, and how it deviates from what we expected them to play. Playing it too safely in any position is a mistake because energetic play is sometimes required.
Paradoxically, this can be especially true in gambit openings. The strategy of capturing a pawn and hunkering down to win the endgame is oftentimes the same as acknowledging that your opponent has compensation for that pawn. If you have an extra pawn, use it! Don't be afraid to sacrifice it back to your opponent for equality or better.
Mistake: "I'll just play something weirder than my opponent to throw them off"
This is chess, not poker. The position on the board has an objective truth, and by overreacting to our opponent's moves we typically only put ourselves in a worse position. Be confident in your opening moves up until this point, and try to use the resources you have to meet your opponent's plan with the sensitivity it deserves.
Mistake: "I'll just develop my pieces to any squares and castle wherever"
Mindlessly developing pieces, including the king, is never a particularly good way to play chess anyway. That's not to say we shouldn't develop pieces or castle -- we should always do so. But in every position, we should always be mindful of the order in which we develop our pieces, make pawn moves, and castle. This applies to unusual openings in just the same way it does any other position in chess.
Mistake: "I hate playing against this opening!"
Reacting to any chess position emotionally is usually a recipe for bad news. Furthermore, hating to play against a particular opening is more often a symptom of a greater underlying cause, which is being profoundly uncomfortable playing against a particular opening (often because we don't have a good plan).
Save the tears or the cheers for after the game.
For starters, the better prepared you are, the less likely you are to feel emotional about facing an unusual opening. More fundamentally, though, we will always face positions in chess which are unfamiliar to us whether we like or dislike them, and they can arise from positions we initially enjoyed. Each game is an adventure, and any good adventure requires hard or unpleasant work.
Mistake: "my opponent is bad at chess because they played something weird"
This is a psychological coping tool that seems to be especially prevalent when we lose to one of these openings. Our lucky opponent hoodwinked us in a totally lost position! They only play these openings because they can't play real chess!
This is simply not true. Every chess player has their own unique reasons for choosing their moves. Some players are uninterested in main lines and truly want to trailblaze new openings. Some players like to trick their opponents and trap them. Some players simply enjoy the positions in their offbeat lines for aesthetic reasons.
Facing unusual openings: the board
Many of the above advice applies to the moves we make over the board -- good advice can't make concrete moves for us, though. When you're facing a new opening over the board, it pays to be a bit more vigilant in your calculations than you normally would. Look out for bizarre ideas like Bxf7 in lines that look otherwise normal. You may be unknowingly walking into a minefield, so tread carefully!
This doesn't mean we should agonize over every move and triple-check it to death. But practically speaking, it will likely pay great dividends to give an extra 30 seconds or a minute to moves in critical looking positions to sanity check ourselves. It can help to get up from the board (if you are playing a longer game), stretch out, then come back to the board with a fresh set of eyes just to make sure you're not missing a threat.
A personal story: the battle of the Viks
On a pleasant, balmy day in the summer of 2007 I had just finished my first year of college and was back in the Seattle area playing an over-the-board tournament at the Seattle Chess Club. One of my games from a midday round finished quickly, so I went to hang out in the skittles area to read a book and kill time before visiting one of the fine local dining establishments like Subway or Safeway.
A few minutes later the door to the skittles area opened and one of the other tournament participants, NM Viktors Pupols, came to sit down after his game. Vik was older than I by half a century (53 years, to be exact), his face wearing permanent creases from a lifetime of intensely scrutinizing the board. A physically imposing man of over six feet with a strong build, I was a bit intimidated by his presence even though I wasn't facing him over the board.
I had heard stories about "Uncle Vik" from countless clubgoers. He is a legend in the Pacific Northwest chess scene and has defeated GM's (and US champions all) Bobby Fischer, Pal Benko, Arthur Bisguier, and Yasser Seirawan (seven times) in tournament games. His reputation as an uncompromising and decorated fighting chess player is without question.
I had never had the chance to actually meet and talk to Vik before. My mental image of him was as some kind of physical and mental titan, a sort of final boss for players in the region to have to beat before they unlocked the rest of chess. This is actually true, even today as Vik approaches his ninetieth birthday and is still playing in the Washington State Championship. But it doesn't tell the full story of Vik.
After half a minute of silence between us, Vik broke the ice and asked me what my name was. I told him my name and, without needing to introduce himself, he said "it's nice to meet you, Peter. Would you like to see my game against Korchnoi from the National Open a couple weeks ago?" I assented, and Vik pulled up his chair up to the board to guide me through his game against GM Viktor Korchnoi.
As players finished their games, they'd trickle in to gather around the board and watch Uncle Vik pluck a story out of his bottomless quiver of chess stories. I remember that he was a very warm person, much more human than I had imagined. He smiled a lot, always thoughtfully entertained suggestions by onlookers, and delighted in sharing his chess adventures.
I learned an immense amount about chess from Vik that day. The game started with one of Vik's many inventions: 1.d4 d5 (or Nf6) 2.b4!?
When Vik reviewed the game, I was struck by how passionate he was about a game that he had lost. I don't think until that day that I'd ever been proud of a game I'd lost -- neither for myself nor for my opponent. And here he was, proud of himself for his idea, and proud of Korchnoi for the way he had masterfully disarmed the white position. To Vik, chess wasn't personal. It was about the love of the game.
Viktors Pupols is a master of strange and unusual openings -- if you don't believe me, visit "A cautionary tale" below to see him beat Fischer with 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5, the Latvian gambit. But Viktor Korchnoi is also a master of facing unusual openings himself. Whenever I envision how to play against any unusual opening, Korchnoi's handling of the position after white's 2.b4!? comes to mind. Korchnoi never gives an inch to his opponent and finishes the game with an instructive rook endgame. I hope you enjoy the interactive lesson below even a fraction of how much I did when I got to sit down with Uncle Vik that day fifteen years ago.
See the last moves of the game below:
A cautionary tale
If you're ever tempted not to take your opponent or their moves seriously, Bobby Fischer would like to teach you a lesson! Watch Vik defeat Fischer with the Latvian gambit -- one of only two tournament games Fischer ever lost on time.
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